“I’m Dreaming of a White [hot chocolate for] Christmas…”

Man, one of the best feelings in the world is a nice morning workout, an even better feeling is a nice hot shower after said workout though. I am officially back on track with my TurboJam schedule (although doing a 45 minute intense workout right before going to work and lifting crates of milk for hours probably wasn’t one of my best ideas – 4 hours into my shift it really caught up to me). Such a good feeling though today… once I worked through the pain left from yesterday. LOL) It felt good to come home and settle back on the couch and watch Frosty the Snowman (the original cartoon one!) which was yesterday’s daily Christmas movie…. guess what today’s was? FROSTY RETURNS! (and I might watch another one depending on what time the hockey game ends tonight (GO LEAFS GO) and if I’m not too tired.)

Then there was the lovely, homemade, white hot chocolate I knew hoped would be waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday that I was looking forward to sipping on while I watched my Christmas movie….

I tried the Hot Chocolate Truffle Balls recipe with white chocolate this time… It didn’t really work out, but I think that’s because I used the wrong cream, it tastes good though. The recipe calls for heavy cream…. and being a 20 year old with no baking experience prior to last month, I had no clue what classified as ‘heavy’ cream. So…

STORY TIME!

So for my first attempt at the hot chocolate truffles, found here, that I was linked to from the post “50 Things to do with Kids in December” (I suggest checking out the post, there are a ton of great ideas – I got the idea for the Ice Wreath there as well)

Anywho, the recipe calls for Heavy Cream, so I went to my nearby grocery store/workplace (I have to support my own paycheck afterall) and looked for the highest percentage of cream, the most I found was 18% *blushes* so I bought it. Now, I knew we carried a 35% whipping cream as well, but we were sold out, and I was anxious to try out the recipe. So I bought a carton of 18% “heavy cream” and my chocolate and skipped home to bake (actually I drove, but for the stories sake lets go with skipping)

Once home, I followed the recipe to a ‘T’ (the best I could with my 18% cream); melted the chocolate into the cream, mixed all till it was smooth, let it set on the counter for 10 minutes, left it in the fridge for 2 hours covered (the recipe calls for 2-3…it was 10:30 at night, probably another thing I should have left longer) But at 10:30 that night I scooped up the chocolate and set it on a baking sheet and placed it in the fridge for another half hour.

When the chocolate was (a little) hardened, I scooped them up (although the recipe calls for you to be able to form them into balls, this was not my case) so I scooped them up and placed them in the saran wrap and stuck ’em in the freezer. They actually turned out alright, a little soft, not real hard like they were supposed to be, but easy enough to unwrap and put in the cup of milk, as a ball of chocolate. Then you just heat it up, and stir.

All in all, they turned out tasty!

Then the real story begins,

I decided, ‘let’s try white hot chocolate!’ But when I went to buy more cream, they had the 35% whipping cream that, I thought, would be better since 35% meant it was ‘heavier’ than 18%…right? Right??

WRONG!

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

It started out alright, looked like everything was going great…

It looked like it was supposed to when it was ready to set in the fridge…. but, it never really set (and I left it for almost 4 hours this time too!)

But it was settled enough I could put it on a tray and leave it uncovered in the fridge (figured that would help it settle more too…)

WRONG!

I left them on trays OVERNIGHT in the fridge and in the morning they were still really hard to scoop up onto the saran wrap…. but I thought I’ d try, and maybe when I put the make-shift balls in the freezer they’d harden enough to hold shape.

HOWEVER! They are still tasty, you just need to scrap them off the saran with a spoon and drop it into the cup…

So the white hot chocolate is scrape, add milk, heat, and stir…. And it does taste delicious still, so that’s always a good thing.

Rest assured though, I plan on going out and FINDING the proper cream so that I can make these the PROPER way and maybe give them away as Christmas gifts, You get about 10 balls from each batch, so just mix some white chocolate and some regular chocolate balls in a mug, wrap it, and give it as a gift. I think that would be a nice idea. Just don’t use 35% whipping cream…

So what did I learn?

“Heavy Cream” does not mean 18% table cream or 35% whipping cream, however, if forced to choose between the two, 18% table cream will be thicker than 35% whipping cream, so buy that.

On the bright side, I now have a supply of whipping cream in my fridge and made myself some fresh, homemade whip cream topping for hot chocolate 😀